A recent Reddit post caught my eye for a sourdough xmas quickbread.

It wasn’t as quick as I’d like, what with creaming butter and sugar, and I didn’t have the 50% starter lying around, or the dried cherries, so I played around with it and added what I did have (mincemeat, marzipan, etc) and came up with this:

• 10oz self raising flour
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 200g golden caster sugar
• 190g 100% starter
• 60g butter melted
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 250g mincemeat
• 100g macadamia nuts
• Leftover marzipan

Method is the simple mix dry, mix wet, combine system, followed by 20 minutes of sitting while I faffed around with various other breads that I’m making today.

Half the mixture goes in a lined 1kg tin, then a layer of rolled out marzipan, then the rest of the mixture.

Bake at 160C fan until a toothpick comes out dry. I first checked after 30 minutes, and in the end it took 90 minutes.

After 10 minutes standing in the tin I took it out with the sling, which worked fine, but when I lifted it back onto the rack the top came off thanks to the marzipan layer! I think I managed to return it without any major issues.

Time to see what it looks like inside…

 It’s very tasty, but a little on the dry side, although the marzipan layer just about takes care of that. Just about… I think my second slice will have butter on it!